Thursday, August 25, 2011

In the aftermath of the draft last night, I would like give out Draft Grades as well as the presentation of the Al Davis Award. Draft Grades are based on an assessment of your team at QB, RB and WR and include a team slogan, best and worst picks, and a letter grade. These are the opinion of a completely impartial third party and do not necessarily represent the views of this blog. Note that there is grade inflation. The impartial third party doesn't want anyone to feel like a loser.

QB - Brady/Cutler combo is solid, but disgustingly self-absorbed
RB - AP aside, there are a lot of RBs who are currently #1 on the depth charts, but may not be for long
WR - Two guys in pass-happy offenses (good) with tons of other options (not good)

QB - Manning/Romo may be the most despicable yet best QB tandem in this league
RB - Injury and Platoon concerns abound, but Ray Rice is a PPR monster
WR - Powerful starting 3, with a lot of rookie/upside depth

QB - Solid starter with a rock solid backup; Maybe went too early on Rivers
RB - Literally no PPR upside on this team at all; LT at 15 could always be a huge steal
WR - Solid big play guys, but not much depth

QB - Two huge upside QBs, made out of glass and Popsicle sticks
RB - Risky first pick in CJ2K with McCoy on the board, but he was gunning for Vick all along
WR - Somewhat weak WR corp after the top two guys

QB - I admire the commitment to focus on the skill guys; Like picking your poison every week
RB - Best starting RBs in the whole league hands down
WR - White is a solid pick in the 2nd; backed up by a few tough week to week calls with the WR corp

Best - Steven Jackson in the 4th round
Worst - Not much to complain about, but Zach Miller in the 16th

8:00 - A CACOPHONY OF SOUNDS! and we are off....The first three picks are EARTH SHATTERING!!

7:57 - John Shust - "I am ready to FUCK SHIT UP"

7:55 - Le Toux Legit 2 Quit - A reference to the Other football, like with your feet. For that reason, and the fact that Sebastien Le Toux is French, make my team name wildly inappropriate, and therefore ironic.

7:43 - Yarnold's F'ing Team - Maybe Yahoo would not let Matt us the actual word Fuck. I don't know. This name is a direct response to me calling him a woman for leaving his name Team Yarnold.

Football Relevance - 1/10

Cleverness - 1/10

Badassness - 1/10

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 1/10

FAIL.

7:40 - Balls & Shaft - I am not really sure what Josh is going for with his name except to make us all think of penises? Or is it penii?

Football Relevance - 2/10

Cleverness - 8/10

Badassness - 9/10

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 3/10 - unless you like penises

7:37 - Buffalo Renaissance - A homer-pick name for a man unlucky enough to be raised in the Buffalo Bills market. Go Fred Jackson!!!

Football Relevance - 10/10

Cleverness - 6/10

Badassness - 6/10

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 7/10

7:32 - Bring It On! - An excellent Family Guy reference with an unfortunate tie to a particular Kirsten Dunst movie.

Football Relevance - 5/10

Cleverness - 8/10

Badassness - 3/10 (due to unfortunate kirsten dunst similarity)

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 7/10

7:27 - Mr. McGibblets - Another reference from The League, though not as disgusting in nature. Mr McGibblets is this guy:

Football Relevance - 8/10

Cleverness - 8/10

Badassness - 6/10

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 8/10

7:24 - Vinegar Strokes - An excellent pop culture reference stemming from The League. Vinegar strokes are the last few motions of the sexual act before a man orgasms where he cares less what could happen around/to him.

Football Relevance - 8/10

Cleverness - 8/10

Badassness - 9/10

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 10/10

Excellent work Travis

7:19 - Cunning Linguists - A clever play on words which immediately incites mental pictures that are NSFW. Luckily the mean age for this league is probably 29, and therefore at least 6 of us get the joke.

Football Relevance - 0/10

Cleverness - 9/10

Badassness - 8/10

Overall Aesthetic Appeal - 9/10

Pizza is here.

7:13pm - Pat and Travis are playing squash, but should be here any minute. Yarnold is MIA with the pizza. In the meantime I will be adding a team by team name review.

7:06pm - Shust is safe and sound in NJ, along with Josh. Paul is ready to go in NY, and Prader, Dubbs and I are at TheNutHouse doing some last minute prep. In some cases, this is first minute prep...Direct quote from Shust - "Am I first?"

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Only 4 days until the Draft...which means that now is the perfect time to announce the...

Al Davis Draft All-Star Epic Fail Award

This prestigious honor is bestowed upon the team with the pick the commissioner deems most ridiculous. It could be an 8th round kicker, a backup backup defense, or Tim Tebow. Who knows? It could be you...

I truly hope that the Draft is so epic and competitive that this award has to be given out posthumously to the owner who wastes a 1st round pick on a QB who gets Tom Brady-ed in Week 1.

On a more official note, I have put some time and some research into typical keeper settings and have formulated a plan that will be up for open debate from now until the Draft.

KEEPER RULES (Read this shit)

1. Each owner has the option of keeping up to three players, but must keep at least two players.

2. Only two players at a given position may be kept by an owner.

3. Only one of the three kept players can come from rounds 1,2 or 3 of the previous year.

4. The owner sacrifices the draft pick of the kept player in the following years draft

5. If the kept player is taken from free agency then the owner sacrifices their 10th round pick.

6. If two kept players are taken from free agency, then the owner sacrifices the 10th and 11th round picks and so on.

7. If a kept player comes from free agency and the 10th round pick is also kept, then the 11th round pick is sacrificed, and so on.

8. If a kept player comes from waivers, then the owner sacrifices the pick in the round in which the player was drafted.

9. A player may be kept by a single owner for a maximum of three seasons (the original drafted season, and two "kept" seasons).

10. Up to the three year limit under a single owner, the owner sacrifices the pick corresponding to the players original drafted round.

11. If a player is traded before the three year limit, the original pick sacrifice is traded with him.

12. If a player is traded at the end of the three year limit, then the new owner sacrifices the pick corresponding to the players preseason ranking for a standard PPR scoring format according to Yahoo! Sports.

13. No trades for draft picks are allowed.

14. Keeper selections are due 5 days prior to next years draft.

15. After the initial four day evaluation window, these rules can only be changed with a majority vote of the league (6+ votes)

So please review these rules and post your opinions in the comments section. We can discuss and finalize prior to the draft. I am more than open to suggestions. Another thing to consider is that we, as a league, can decide to move to a vote veto system for regular league trades. I believe the league is set to default to commissioner veto. If everyone agrees to be responsible and actually vote for trades, then I am happy to switch it and take the pressure off of myself.

See you on Wednesday, or at least see your cute little avatar on the web during the Draft. Would be nice to get to the money before the draft or at the draft. We are NOT doing the everyone send the winner the money, because it is a nightmare for the winner. My address is officially 6256 Charles St, Philadelphia, PA 19135

Here is to a long season of ridiculous James Harrison comments, alternating Michael Vick kills dogs/Michael Vick is the savior of Philadelphia discussions, Pat and Josh having wildly different valuation systems for trades, Ben Roethlisberger getting accused of rape, Shust getting too "busy" with "work" to update his team and them getting physically beaten as a result, and me winning.

Friday, August 19, 2011

If you look at the picture below and think "who is this weird dude in a straw hat smoking a cigar while being filmed with night vision?" don't worry, all will be explained...

For those who recognize one Dan Gabrielson, I have exciting news. Late at night here at the office in bowels of Alumni Engineering at Drexel University, I have found my copy of both of the original Drexel Crew films. I will be working to post/distribute to anyone and everyone who wants a copy.

Non-rowers, if you are into poorly filmed camcorder movies with a lot of homo-erotic dance sequences, cross-dressing, overuse of nightvision, action footage of a sport that is not particularly fun to watch, ugly chicks, and my nude ass, then you are in for a treat...

Monday, August 15, 2011

A big congratulations goes out to Cunning Linguists (Nate) who managed to convince a lovely young lady to marry him despite his hairy back, his unnatural love of Christmas and his perpetual, toxic farts. He dropped the bomb on her Friday night at the Art Museum...Philly through and through. That reduces the number of competitors in this league who are not engaged or married to ONE.

Here are the two lovebirds at their finest...

In other news, we are a mere nine days away from the draft. I am slowly shifting my schedule from 40% work, 30% reading stuff on the internet, 15% eating, 15% staring off into space to a more reasonable 60% reading about fantasy sports specifically, 20% eating, 15% staring off into space, 5% working. This is standard for fantasy football season. I hope you are all doing the same.

There was some confusion about the draft setup. I will attempt to clarify, but the confused person shall remain anonymous because they are stupid and I do not want to embarrass them any more than necessary. We will be doing an ONLINE draft, but those of us who live in Philadelphia will congregate at a single location and bring laptops or other similar computing devices. We connect to the interweb and draft online while yelling insults at each other. It will be fun.

I think we are settled on Nate's place for the draft. He promised to force his lady to make us food etc. Probably end up buying food though because Kim is the one who really knows about Fantasy Football, and will be too busy telling Nate who to draft to make some damn nachos...

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

So this is where the craziness will be documented. Yahoo won't let me do a big write up and goddammit I want to, so here is where it will be. I will be developing some weekly and season-long awards which will be handed out here in the most ceremonious fashion possible. For those who have been in my leagues before, you know what I am talking about. For those who are new, I will give you a taste of things to come.

Flawless. Victory.

So one such award I will be bringing back is the Bear Grylls Male Performance Turtle Blood Award, which will be bestowed upon the highest scorer of the week. The award was originally developed for a co-ed league, but since our league is 9 men and John Shust, we will just default to only one award.

If you have any ideas for awards or would like to suggest anything else for the league send me an email or comment on the blog.

Important League Reminders:

Dues - $50 before the Draft
Draft - August 24th at 8pm
Team names cannot suck
Throw a picture up there for your team, not a creepy avatar or boring helmet

I am considering some side competitions like The UCFAC Beard Growing Competition (Travis wins 1st by default) but prizes are awarded for 2nd place.

KEEPER Rules - Not developed yet, but will be posted on here as soon as I post them.